But ya know what has been proven to contribute to heart disease, atherosclerosis, dyslipidemia, NAFLD, hyperinsulimia/Type 2 diabetes, and chronic inflammation? Refined carbohydrates (Taubes, Lustig, et al).
I kinda understand the downvotes because we’ve had 50+ years of saturated fat fearmongering. But when you start digging into this long running, test-in-production experiment on human diet and health, it’s hard to avoid conspiratorial thinking.
Ancel Keys established a spurious link between cholesterol and heart disease. His Seven Countries Study was an early application of regression analysis. What is very rarely mentioned was that Keys omitted 5 countries (more? Can’t exactly recall) that didn’t fit the regression he wanted to show. (Ref: “Good Calories, Bad Calories,” Gary Taubes)
Keys’ contributions to lipid hypothesis fucked the metabolic health of millions for decades.
Regarding Keys’ centenarian expiration, go find a pic of what that dude looked like for the last few decades of his life. I’ll pass on the longevity and his diet plan.
And if you’re interested in how nutritionally screwed we are in the US:
In general, match your chain to the number of cogs in your cassette/freewheel. If you want more detail, tell us what kind of drivetrain you have.
Those are calrod elements. The resistive coil is inside that tube. The bolts hold the steel shell. The affixing nuts hold the outer casing and are not conducting electricity.
The insulation can fail and the inner coil will touch the shell, although I’ve only seen it happen once. Blew a hole in the bottom of a pot in dramatic fashion.
Edit to add: I am a huge fan of “Teach Yourself Electricity and Electronics” by Stan Gibilisco, which is now in its 7th edition. Back in the 90s, I got my start with the 2nd edition. Here’s the 4th for free on Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/teachyourselfele00stan
This is the correct answer right here. The process is called “chip binning.” https://www.techspot.com/article/2039-chip-binning/
If I’m reading you correctly, this is what Decentralized ID (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_identifier) aims to resolve, not just for social accounts. I wrote the initial DID implementation for my previous employer, but FIs, especially credit unions (our primary customers) were still a ways off from implementing it.
My familiarity with ATProto (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT_Protocol) is extremely shallow, but as I understand it, ATProto can use DID. Hopefully someone else will come along and provide more info or correct my error.
What is the benefit of tubeless bicycle tires anyways?
Tubeless tires can be run at lower pressures without risk of pinch flats, also called snakebites because of the distinctive double hole in the tube. The wider working range of tire pressures allows riders to dial their tire pressure to the riding conditions, whereas clinchers (standard bicycle tires + tube) have much narrower pressure ranges. Varying the tire pressure has all kinds of benefits, especially with multi-surface tires, allowing the cornering blocks to bite into the surface earlier in turns. On gnarly chipseal pavement, the lower pressure means less fatigue, which quickly adds up over some miles. Failing to notice, or being unable to avoid, a pothole won’t cause a pinch flat. You can still dent your rim, but that’s mostly a non-issue with the ubiquity of disc brakes on bikes. On a clincher, you’re guaranteed a pinch flat if you hit something hard enough to dent the rim.
Tubeless tires provide the feel and higher traction of tubular tires (also called glue-ons, sew-ups) with greater durability, easier maintenance, and easier repairability.
For regions with goatheads and blackberries, tubeless is pretty much the only way to go farther afield. Tire strips can help, but they deaden the feel, mess with tire dynamics, increase rotational weight, and very rarely protect sidewalls. They are also (usually) horrible to install and can chafe tubes unless installed very carefully.
In regions without regular street-cleaning, with less frequent tire replacement, and with higher use of tire chains, it’s very common to encounter tire belting and fragments of tire chains. Tubeless bicycle tires are a day-saver. In my own experience, I can now ride those roads where it was previously common to get multiple flats. Before I switched to tubeless, one ride in particular in rural Oregon resulted in 8 flats in 40 miles. And then I was out of patches and spare tubes; day is over, call for a ride. All the flats were caused by tiny pieces of tire belting. I now check my tires once a week to pick out the tire belting I picked up, but I get zero flats.
Oh, I forgot to mention, it did not clog the valve at all, and it’s also tire sensor safe.
Our direct experiences are very different. And bicycles don’t have TPS.
If FaF was actually superlative for bicycles on any metric, we would all have switched long ago. At the very least, some pioneering shadetree bike mechanic would be singing its praises far and wide. I resisted the tubeless tire trend until late 2025 despite having worked on other’s bikes with tubeless, in part because I didn’t feel like building up new wheels. “Meh, everything I have is just fine.” I kick myself for having hesitated. It’s just so much better on all counts.
Sealant for tubeless bicycle tires is an entirely different formulation, and FaF is categorically ill-suited for bicycle tires.
Idling engines chap my ass. But TINSTAAFL. Auto stop is terrible for engines; the majority of engine wear in passenger automobiles occurs at startup. Also, during auto stop, the catalytic converter cools down a bit, so emissions go up. More wear —> more emissions —> more waste.
Edit: For my rebuttal, I started digging into this. While the sources I found are still “auto technician says so,” it looks like engines with auto-stop are built for more start-stop cycles. I was operating on outdated information. Automobile engines were/are typically designed for 100k to 150k starts. In trying to find more information about auto-stop, the overall consensus seems that auto-stop engines are designed for >300k starts. Moreover, there seem to be some accounts indicating that exhaust temperature is part of the auto-stop monitoring, which would make sense and keep the emissions controls running properly.
So, thanks to @borkborkbork, @0ops, and @Janx for prompting me to get updated information.
But as a bike commuter, auto stop was pleasant in traffic, at least until everyone suddenly started up again and then stomped on the pedal.
The wholesale gutting of all attempts at environmental protection is an interesting choice for the “protect the children” party. But even as an avid car hater, I’m not sure this is a huge loss.
Hey, don’t judge. Spotting a Dumpstericus greenii in its native habitat was on my bucket list.
My mother thinks US workers still get pensions if they stay at a company long enough. She also thinks that staying at one employer for decades is the key to higher pay, better benefits, and promotions. This is a constant, exhaustingly repetitive conversation with her every time I get recruited and poached by a company.
I am a founding board member and the treasurer for my regional timebank. I also have done custom software development and IT work for my county and city food bank. In the past, I was a founding board member and technology specialist for the local food co-op. I also used to own and operate a community bike shop where I performed free repairs for anyone who said they couldn’t afford it.
I prefer volunteer work that directly shores up my communities, promotes food security and social equity, connects local food producers to consumers as directly as possible, and empowers non-monetary exchange of labor and skills. For me, timebanks are the sweet spot for these goals. Everyone’s time is valued equally, and everyone has something to offer their communities on an as-able basis. More than that, a timebank promotes members to see all in their community as peers and neighbors despite any superficial differences.
This exact thing happened in Portland OR in Inner SE, ~2010. It was a butcher shop if I recall correctly, covered by BikePortland, but now I can’t find a link. The bike lane was installed despite the owner’s best efforts. Sales went up, and he still went on record as continuing to oppose the bike lanes despite increased business. Mind-boggling.
For the horror readers, it’s in “Books of Blood, Volume 2.”
Every Paolo Baciagalupi novel and the first two acts of almost every Cory Doctorow novel. “The Water Knife” by Baciagalupi is fictional near-future extrapolation on the excellent non-fiction “Cadillac Desert.” “Walkaway” and the Little Brother books by Doctorow cast a stark light on the nature of power, surveillance, and authoritarianism in Western society. It doesn’t take a lot of social imagination to see that’s exactly where we’re going.
250kg GVWR on a folding chassis is some proper capacity. And ~27kg for a folding longjohn seems entirely reasonable. My Larry vs Harry Bullitt was ~21kg.
Hase Pino Tour with the stoker position removed. I put on an Aventon cargo tray that someone abandoned at the LBS. Burley Travoy for additional lightweight capacity. This load was supplies for a Juneteenth cookout party for 20 people.
For very heavy or large loads, I have a Surly Bill trailer.
Carrying a boat of this size on the Surly Bill is strongly contraindicated. :D I had a lot of weight in the stern, but the load shifted and things got squirrelly.
These are excellent points and spot on. We’re all looking for the silver bullet and elevator pitch, even those of us who know better. “Oh, just stop eating fatty meat, eggs, and salt!” Except it’s way more complex than that. To Keys’ credit, he also highlighted the importance of weight management/obesity, cardiovascular health, and “regular” exercise. The definition of “regular” of course keeps getting modified.
Agreed, although too much of anything is bad. “The toxicity is in the dose.” Keys pushed replacing saturated fats with PUFAs, which became a whole different problem with industrial PUFAs becoming the norm. Industrial PUFAs are high in Omega-6 EFA while being low in Omega-3 EFA. Humans don’t actually need any digestible carbohydrates to survive, but we very much need fats and protein to live. Nutritional research has merely been negotiating on where the borders are.
We worry too much about exogenous cholesterol, when endogenous cholesterol is the real problem. Cholesterol is a lot like that joke about the guy looking for his keys in the middle of the street. “Did you lose your keys around here?” “No, but this is where the light is.” Cholesterol, especially back when nutrition policy was being set, was what we could easily measure, and that was a correlation that science pursued. Epidemiological studies are notoriously tricky, sometimes just a step above anecdote. And to discuss these things in any serious detail requires a couple book-feet of text, most of it being contextual qualification.
Regarding the importance of cholesterol as a risk indicator: What’s probably closer to the truth is balance of HDL to LDL and cholesterol to HDL, with triglycerides being a case-by-case basis. If I recall correctly >500mg/dL being the absolute level for concern and interventions, with >200mg/dL being considered abnormally high.
I think in the end, we all have to find what works for us at our given point in life. Because no silver bullet and there’s no way to discuss these things simply and quickly.